The Pulse
Reddit Keeps Three Claims Against Anthropic Alive in Scraping Suit
A San Francisco judge let Reddit pursue breach-of-contract, contract-interference and unfair-competition claims against Anthropic over alleged scraping of Reddit data. The court gave Reddit until October 16 to amend its unjust-enrichment an
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
“This ruling sends a strong message – AI companies don’t get a free pass to ignore the law.”
A Reddit spokesperson, in a statement to Mashable
A San Francisco judge on September 17 let Reddit pursue three claims against Anthropic over alleged scraping of Reddit content to train Claude, while giving the company a chance to revise two others. The order, filed the following day, rejected Anthropic’s bid to knock out Reddit’s breach-of-contract, interference-with-contract and California unfair-competition claims at the pleading stage.
Three of Reddit’s Five Claims Survive
Judge Harold Kahn overruled Anthropic’s demurrer on the three claims. A demurrer tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim, rather than deciding whether the allegations are true. The ruling therefore allows those parts of Reddit’s case to continue; it does not find that Anthropic scraped unlawfully or establish liability.
Kahn sustained the demurrer on Reddit’s unjust-enrichment and trespass-to-chattels claims, but with leave to amend. Reddit has until October 16 to refile those claims with revisions. The split leaves the case moving forward on claims tied to contractual obligations and alleged interference with user relationships, while setting aside two theories as currently pleaded.
The Dispute Turns on Alleged Access and Notice
Reddit filed suit in 2025, accusing Anthropic of using automated bots to access its platform without permission and using user data to train Claude. Anthropic argued that Reddit’s User Agreement did not create an enforceable contract because users did not have to click an “I agree” button to browse the site.
Kahn rejected that argument at this stage. He pointed to Reddit’s allegation that Anthropic’s automated systems accessed the platform more than 100,000 times after Reddit’s chief executive publicly objected to the scraping. That figure is an allegation cited in the ruling, not a finding that the court independently verified every access or its purpose.
A Copyright Fight Returns to State Court
The case’s route to Kahn’s courtroom shaped the dispute. Anthropic had argued that federal copyright law displaced Reddit’s state-law claims; a federal judge sent the suit back to California state court in March, finding that the claims included elements beyond copying, including alleged violations of access restrictions, user-privacy commitments and misrepresentations.
Anthropic renewed its challenge in the state court demurrer. Kahn relied heavily on the federal judge’s analysis in allowing the unfair-competition claim and two other claims to survive. For the UCL claim, the dispute includes Reddit’s allegations of unauthorized automated access and unfair competitive advantage, as well as claims that Anthropic misrepresented its compliance with scraping restrictions.
The Ruling Leaves the Merits Open
Reddit described the decision as a warning to AI companies, while Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment to Mashable. The ruling does not decide whether Reddit’s terms bind Anthropic, whether the company’s alleged conduct violated those terms or what damages, if any, Reddit could recover.
For now, the procedural result is specific: three claims remain in the suit, and two can return if Reddit amends them by October 16. The next step on those dismissed claims is a revised complaint, not a judgment on the scraping allegations.